Stanford Psychology Podcast - Stanford Psychology

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124 - Oriel FeldmanHall: Punishment, Forgiveness, and Predicting Emotions Jan 12, 2024

Show notes

This week, Rachel chats with Oriel FeldmanHall, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistics, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. Oriel's lab leverages methods from behavioral economics, social psychology, and neuroscience to explore the neural bases of social behavior, and the role of emotion in shaping social interactions. She has won numerous awards, including the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s Young Investigator Award for outstanding contributions to science, the Association for Psychological Science’s Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions, and the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology.

In this episode, Oriel provides an introduction to the world of affective science, explaining how her team measures and studies emotion. She describes how the emotions that we expect to feel—and the inaccuracies in our predictions—shape our judgments and behavior, and the complex relationship between emotion and depression. We also discuss the hazards of sharing scientific findings on twitter, and how some of the best research questions originate in coffee shops.
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Links:
Link to the paper we discussed
Check out more of Professor Oriel FeldmanHall's work at the FeldmanHall lab website!
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123 - Jacqueline Gottlieb: Are You Curious About Curiosity? Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

This week, Julia chats with Jacqueline Gottlieb, Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Institute for Mind, Brain, and Behavior at Columbia University in New York. Since joining the Columbia Faculty in 2001, she has spearheaded pioneering research on the neural mechanisms of attention and curiosity, using computational modeling combined with behavioral and neurophysiological studies in humans and non-human primates.

In this episode, Professor Gottlieb unlocks the fundamental forces governing curiosity. She begins by explaining the ambiguity inherent in uncertainty and the balance between potential risks and rewards. Then, she reviews a recent study that suggests that we don’t always reason optimally about uncertainty. After discussing potential reasons why we might struggle with decision making surrounding uncertainty, she highlights key personality factors from the study that were associated with more successful decision making. Finally, she closes by sharing her hopes for the future of the field.

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Links:

Link to the paper we discussed

Check out more of Professor Gottlieb’s work at her lab website!

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122 - Michal Kosinski: Studying Theory of Mind and Reasoning in LLMs. Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

Xi Jia chats with Dr. Michal Kosinski, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Michal's research interests recently encompass both human and artificial cognition. Currently, his work centers on examining the psychological processes in Large Language Models (LLMs), and leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data, and computational techniques to model and predict human behavior.
In this episode, they chat about Michal's recent works: "Theory of Mind Might Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models" and "Human-like intuitive behavior and reasoning biases emerged in large language models but disappeared in ChatGPT". Michal also shared his scientific journey and some personal suggestions for PhD students.
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Michal's paper on Theory of Mind in LLMs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02083
Michal's paper on reasoning bias in LLMs: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-023-00527-x
Michal's personal website: https://www.michalkosinski.com/

Xi Jia's profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/xijia-zhou

Xi Jia's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/LauraXijiaZhou

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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121 - Joshua Hartshorne: Does a Similar Native Tongue Speed Up English Learning for Kids? Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

Anjie chats with Dr. Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College where he directs the Language Learning Laboratory. He studies language learning from a variety of aspects, including but not limited to: bootstrapping language acquisition, relationship between language and commonsense, as well as the critical periods in learning new languages. In this episode, they chat about Josh’s recent work on second language acquisition: “Will children learn English faster if their native language is similar to English?”. Josh also shares some insights on the best way to teach language to kids and adults.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Josh’s paper: https://l3atbc-public.s3.amazonaws.com/pub_pdfs/Yun%20et%20al%202023.pdf

Josh’s personal profile: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/mcas/departments/psychology/people/faculty-directory/joshua-hartshorne.html

Josh’s lab website: http://l3atbc.org/index.html

Anjie’s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie’s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

120 - Steve Fleming and Nadine Dijkstra: Distinguishing Imagination from Reality Oct 26, 2023

Show notes

This week, Julia chats with two guests from University College London, Professor Steve Fleming and Dr. Nadine Dijkstra. Professor Fleming is the Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology and Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging where he leads the Metacognition Group. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the William James prize from the Association for Scientific Study of Consciousness. Dr. Dijkstra is a Senior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at University College London. She earned her PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the Donders Institute in 2019, after which she moved to London to pursue a postdoc at UCL with Professor Fleming.

In this episode, Dr. Dijkstra and Professor Fleming take us into the fascinating realm of how we distinguish, or at least attempt to distinguish, reality from imagination. They relate the details of a recent study, which indicates that our perceptions of reality might not be as different from our imaginations as we would like to believe. They suggest that this framework of perceptual reality monitoring could be a lens through which our brains interpret all of our experiences. In fact, this perceptual reality monitoring framework might provide an explanation of how we consciously experience the world. After discussing their recent experiment and relating it to the broader field of consciousness science, each of them shares details about their career journeys and their hopes for the future of the field.

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If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Link to the paper we discussed

Check out more of Professor Fleming and Dr. Dijkstra’s work at the UCL Metacognition lab website!

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at stanfordpsychologypodcast@gmail.com

119 - Bryan Brown: Virtual Reality for Science Education Oct 19, 2023

Show notes

Anjie chats with Dr. Bryan Brown. Bryan is a professor of teacher education at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His research interest explores the relationship between student identity, discourse, classroom culture, and academic achievement in science education. In this episode, we chat about his recent work on adopting VR – Virtual Reality in the classroom. The title of the paper we discuss is Teaching culturally relevant science in virtual reality: “when a problem comes, you can solve it with science”. Bryan shares his insights on how VR could be a valuable tool to science education. He also talks about how he became interested in this topic.

Bryan’s paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1046560X.2020.1778248

Bryan’s personal profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/bryan-brown

Anjie’s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie’s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

118 - Josh Jackson: Morality, Culture, and Social Media Oct 12, 2023

Show notes

Eric chats with Joshua Jackson, newly minted Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. In his research, Josh studies how culture co-evolves with psychology. He is interested in how culture has shaped the mind throughout human history, and how it continues to shape human futures. He regularly publishes in the field’s best journals with innovative methods and is by many considered a rising star in psychology.

In this chat, Eric and Josh discuss culture and morality. Why do some cultures have a crude view of another’s morality as either all good or all bad, when some cultures have a more nuanced view? Can we ever know how kind someone truly is? How does social media impact our sense of morality? Finally, Josh shares his exciting journey across the whole globe to find his identity as an academic and opens up about the hopes and anxieties he has over becoming a professor.

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Links:

Josh's paper
Josh's website
Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

117 - Sho Tsuji: A blueprint for modeling how babies acquire language Oct 05, 2023

Show notes

Anjie chats with Dr. Sho Tsuji, an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo where she directs the IRCN baby lab. Her core research interests involve understanding how babies acquire language efficiently. In this episode, we chat about her recent work on approaching this question from a computational perspective, a paper titled “SCALa: A blueprint for computational models of language acquisition in social context”. Sho explained why a computational perspective is crucial for understanding language acquisition. She also shared her perspective on large language models as a human language acquisition researcher.

Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027721001980?casa_token=qgQQnJZhAtsAAAAA:jpgo27gePFql_iSljm__ZAEcnT-3Qcemy5_QMVxL06DQO_ZJjHuGeBlFHmnnbUd-9UD5xNGK920

Sho’s personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/tsujish/home

Sho’s lab website: https://babylab.ircn.jp/en/

Anjie’s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie’s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

116 - George Mashour: How Psychedelics Can Shed Light on Consciousness Sep 28, 2023

Show notes

This week, Julia chats with George Mashour, the Robert B. Sweet Professor and Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. Professor Mashour was the founding director of the University of Michigan Center for Consciousness Science and the Michigan Psychedelic Center.

In this episode, Julia and Professor Mashour discuss the reinvigorated study of psychedelics and the light it may shed on different dimensions of consciousness. Professor Mashour weighs in on the ongoing normative debate about how psychedelic drugs should be defined. Should they be defined on a molecular level by their mechanism of action in the brain or based upon the subjective experience they produce in the user?

He relates the results of an exciting recent study that uses psychedelic drugs as a tool to alter normal states of consciousness. This enables him to compare brain network dynamics in these altered states of consciousness with those dynamics in normal states of consciousness and with those in lowered states of consciousness induced by anesthesia. In some ways, this technique allows us to peer into the brain to find out what brain activity is associated with particular experiences. Professor Mashour also offers his perspective on two of the most prominent theories of consciousness and a groundbreaking ongoing adversarial collaboration evaluating them.

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If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Professor Mashour’s paper

Professor Mashour’s website

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at stanfordpsychologypodcast@gmail.com

115 - Matt Abrahams: Think Faster, Talk Smarter Sep 21, 2023

Show notes

Eric chats with Matt Abrahams, leading expert in the field of communication and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Matt is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and communications consultant. He has helped numerous presenters prepare for high-stakes talks, including Nobel Prize award presentations, and appearances at TED and the World Economic Forum. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award-winning podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart, The Podcast.

In this chat, Eric and Matt discuss all things public speaking and stage fright, introducing Matt’s upcoming book Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot which provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously.
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If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Matt's upcoming NEW BOOK
Matt's LinkedIn
Matt's website
Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com

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